Kishore Biyani-led Future Retail’s Big Bazaar has launched a two-hour delivery service for fashion, food, FMCG and home products on the retail chain’s website or mobile app as it looks to expand its presence online.
The 2-hour delivery service is first being rolled out in Mumbai, Bengaluru and Delhi. In the next 45 days, this will be extended to all the cites where Big Bazaar has 3 or more stores. Going forward, Big Bazaar aims to extend it to more than 150 cities that have a Big Bazaar store.
Users will have to place a minimum order of Rs 500, and Big Bazaar will also be charging a delivery fee of Rs 49 for orders up to Rs 1,000.
The announcement comes at a time when Future Group’s deal to sell Future Retail to Reliance Industries is embroiled in legal proceedings with Amazon objecting to the Rs 24,713-crore deal. On Thursday, the company told the stock exchanges that Reliance Retail Ventures has extended the timeline for Long Stop for the deal to buy Future Retail from March 31 to September 30, 2021.
Future Group took a massive hit due to the pandemic, having lost nearly Rs 7000 crore of revenue in just the first 3-4 months of the pandemic, forcing it to sell its retail, wholesale and logistics business to Reliance Industries in August 2020.
However, the company says that the delivery service is expected to bring in incremental revenue to stores and hasn’t required significant incremental investment since it had a lot of the infrastructure in place through its 285 retail stores across the country.
Kamaldeep Singh, President, Food Business and Head Online business at Future Retail told the media that the company was working on rolling out this delivery service for nearly two years but had delayed the launch due to the pandemic. Over the past 15 months the entire organisation and processes were redesigned to offer the 2-hour delivery to customers, he added.
With the launch of the delivery service, Big Bazaar will be taking on the likes of BigBasket and Amazon that offer similar delivery services. However, Singh says that Big Bazaar stores have a competitive advantage due to a larger assortment of products across fashion, food, home products. He also claims that Big Bazaar is the first retailer in India to offer home delivery within 2 hours on almost every consumer product ordered online.
“With this launch Future Group will become the first multi channel retailer in the country with complete digital capabilities. This 2-Hour Delivery service will let customers order fashion late in the evening and wear it to office next day, or order a new dining set in the afternoon and serve on it to guests at dinner get-together. A quick and fast home delivery need not just be limited to food products. At Big Bazaar we wanted our customers to enjoy instant home delivery for almost every product. Our store network, logistics, and technology capabilities now allows us to do so,” Kishore Biyani, Founder & Group CEO, Future Group said in a statement
The 2-hour delivery service is first being rolled out in Mumbai, Bengaluru and Delhi. In the next 45 days, this will be extended to all the cites where Big Bazaar has 3 or more stores. Going forward, Big Bazaar aims to extend it to more than 150 cities that have a Big Bazaar store.
Users will have to place a minimum order of Rs 500, and Big Bazaar will also be charging a delivery fee of Rs 49 for orders up to Rs 1,000.
The announcement comes at a time when Future Group’s deal to sell Future Retail to Reliance Industries is embroiled in legal proceedings with Amazon objecting to the Rs 24,713-crore deal. On Thursday, the company told the stock exchanges that Reliance Retail Ventures has extended the timeline for Long Stop for the deal to buy Future Retail from March 31 to September 30, 2021.
Future Group took a massive hit due to the pandemic, having lost nearly Rs 7000 crore of revenue in just the first 3-4 months of the pandemic, forcing it to sell its retail, wholesale and logistics business to Reliance Industries in August 2020.
However, the company says that the delivery service is expected to bring in incremental revenue to stores and hasn’t required significant incremental investment since it had a lot of the infrastructure in place through its 285 retail stores across the country.
Kamaldeep Singh, President, Food Business and Head Online business at Future Retail told the media that the company was working on rolling out this delivery service for nearly two years but had delayed the launch due to the pandemic. Over the past 15 months the entire organisation and processes were redesigned to offer the 2-hour delivery to customers, he added.
With the launch of the delivery service, Big Bazaar will be taking on the likes of BigBasket and Amazon that offer similar delivery services. However, Singh says that Big Bazaar stores have a competitive advantage due to a larger assortment of products across fashion, food, home products. He also claims that Big Bazaar is the first retailer in India to offer home delivery within 2 hours on almost every consumer product ordered online.
“With this launch Future Group will become the first multi channel retailer in the country with complete digital capabilities. This 2-Hour Delivery service will let customers order fashion late in the evening and wear it to office next day, or order a new dining set in the afternoon and serve on it to guests at dinner get-together. A quick and fast home delivery need not just be limited to food products. At Big Bazaar we wanted our customers to enjoy instant home delivery for almost every product. Our store network, logistics, and technology capabilities now allows us to do so,” Kishore Biyani, Founder & Group CEO, Future Group said in a statement
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